Little houses, new apartments,
Bodies smelling fresh in the morning, rank at night-
When I pack, I layout every sock, each pair
Of shorts without a fold.
If my shirts are too large to lie down flat,
I tuck their arms beneath their sides to fill the suitcase perfectly.
A window, the desk, a lamp and a chair.
One of life' s greatest pleasures,
If I'm allowed the phrase,
Is packing a suitcase.
It's not like building a fire,
When you want to leave space for air.
band by then, and his sister was singing
backup. ("The black Partridge Family,"
Tariq used to call them. ) He'd made his
musical début almost by accident, two
years earlier, when the band's regular
drummer cancelled at the last moment.
As it happened, the show that night was
an oldies revue at Radio City Music
Hall, but that wasn't what worried him.
"I'll tell you why I freaked out," he told
me. "The keyboard player was dating
Susan from 'Sesame Street.' When I saw
her backstage, I was having a heart at-
tack. My mom and dad said, Just calm
down. You know the show. Do it!'" He
was twelve years old.
I t was close to eleven o'clock when the
Roots arrived in Manchester, and
Qyestlove's relief factor had crept up to
thirty. Word had it that D'Angelo was
through airport security in Los Angeles;
one text message even claimed that he
was sitting on a plane. "Now it's, like, Is
the plane in the air?" Qyestlove said.
"And, once he lands, is he going to be
ready to play?" The real relief wouldn't
come until three in the morning, on the
way home from the show, he said. "It's
not my job to enjoy myself"
Still, when he walked into the re-
hearsal room at the local Holiday Inn
Express, he couldn't help but grin.
Standing there amid the usual Stone-
henge of equipment-the stacks of
amplifiers and speakers, guitars and
double-tiered keyboards, all spaghettied
-James Longenbach
together with patch cords and cables-
were three of his musical heroes. Jesse
Johnson, the former lead guitarist for
the legendary Minneapolis group the
Time, was in one corner, wearing mir-
ror shades and a trenchcoat. Across
from him stood Pino Palladino, a gan-
gly Welshman and bassist of surpassing
funkiness, who has played with everyone
from B. B. King to Paul Simon. Next to
Palladino, looking like a middle-aged
bank clerk in a dark suit and spectacles,
was Eric Leeds, the saxophonist on
some ofPrincès greatest records. While
-0
.
.
... ...
.
... ... ...
they shouted out greetings and gave
each other shoulder hugs, Kendra Fos-
ter, who used to sing with Parliament-
Funkadelic, glided into the room trail-
ing a comet's tail of reddish-blond curls.
"This is like rock-and-roll fantasy
camp," Kirk Douglas muttered.
Douglas is a dazzling guitarist in his
own right, and physically striking: he
has the polished skin and sculpted
cheekbones of an onyx cat. But although
he has been with the Roots for nearly a
decade, he's still something of an out-
sider. While most of the band grew up
on the streets of Philadelphia, he was
raised in relative comfort on Long Is-
land, the son of a United Nations ad-
ministrator. While they were listening
to Public Enemy, he was listening to
Van Halen and Kiss. "I went through
my fair share of hazing," he told me. "I
can interpret that as just some Philly shit
that I don't know about, but the good-
natured ribbing didn't feel very good-
natured at the time." The contrast with
Jesse Johnson didn't help matters here.
The two stood on opposite sides of the
drum kit, like fun-house mirror images:
Douglas with a mini-fro teased up in
front, Johnson with a full afro; Douglas
with a Les Paul dusted with glitter;
Johnson with a Stratocaster covered in
lush paisley. "Hè s got the Jesse Johnson
starter kit!" James Poyser, the Roots'
keyboardist, joked. "There's the before
and therè s the after."
As a bandleader, Qyestlove is always
on the lookout for situations like this-
for a chance to throw his players into a
lake, as he puts it. "Kirk is a natural-born
star," he told me later. "But he has a ten-
dency to clam up. He couldn't even talk
to Jesse. And when hès nervous he'll just
start shredding. I want him to shine."
Hip-hop can be a hard sell as live the-
atre: a rapper shouting over a drum track
isn't much to look at. The Roots side-
step this problem by playing instru-
ments, but Qyestlove has also never for-
gotten the stagecraft he learned on the
oldies circuit. "I remember my first tour
with the Roots, in Japan," Douglas said.
"I'm about to go do a solo when Ahmir
calls me over. He says, 'When you go
out there, I want you to give me "Purple
Rain." I want you to give me "Lights,
camera, action!" , I'm thinking, What-
ever I do, I just don't want to go back to
teaching preschool. So I walk on the
table. I play slide on my ass. I'm doing
the whole Will Ferrell 'Anchorman'
routine. By the end of the solo, I'm
walking back yelling, 'Is this what you
want? Is that what you want?'"
The Roots would play two shows that
night: a set of their own music and a set
with D'Angelo and the others. The
D'Angelo show had been billed as a
"Super Jam," but Qyestlove had no in-
tention of winging it. He had put to-
gether a list of thirteen songs-mostly
THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 12, 2012 59